Leicester Tigers hooker Tom Youngs keen to make amends for the 45-0 thrashing
against Bath at The Rec and to reclaim his England place

Reference to the details has not been required apparently. So hooker Tom Youngs reckons the 45-0 scoreline Leicester endured at the hands of Bath in September has not specifically been talked about in the build-up to the return fixture at Welford Road on Sunday. “It hasn’t been mentioned at all,” he said. “Everyone knows it.”

Indeed they do. In a season of remarkable Aviva Premiership rugby, it is still the result that stands out most shockingly, seemingly a signpost screeching the intertwined story of Leicester’s decline and Bath’s rise.

Leicester were humiliated. “We got embarrassed down there,” Youngs said. “They played extremely well, we were very average. It was bad. It was probably the worst feeling we have had for a long time.

“It was similar when we lost the semi-final at Northampton last season. We were completely embarrassed, we got torn apart. It was lick your wounds and go home sort of thing.”

Leicester were ravaged by injuries beforehand, and Geoff Parling and Youngs departed during the match – “yeah, to top it all off I got injured as well,” Youngs lamented – but nobody has really explained why Leicester were so abject that afternoon.

“I don’t really know why it happened,” Youngs said. “They got on top of us pretty quickly and I don’t think we responded in the right way, and then we couldn’t get ourselves into the game. Suddenly we were getting further and further down and we were trying to do more attacking stuff, and then we ended up turning over the ball. Then they score and you are back to square one again.”

As Mike Ford, the Bath head coach, has confirmed, the Leicester director of rugby, Richard Cockerill, was keen to remind his opponents afterwards that things would be very different when they met at Welford Road. But Youngs insists that was not necessarily the case among the players. “I don’t think there was that feeling,” he says. “You are always going to look forward to playing Bath, whatever. But obviously you have got that factor in the back of your mind. You play so many games these days. You review it on the Monday and then you have got to concentrate on the next game and what the opposition there will bring.”

In truth Youngs is just happy to be back playing rather than talking of revenge missions. There are much more important matters, as Youngs discovered last year.

He missed England’s tour of New Zealand last summer to nurse his wife Tiffany through the initial treatment for a serious illness. It is not a subject about which Youngs wishes to speak in detail but he does say: “She is fine thank you. She is going all right.”

And then he missed England’s autumn internationals because of the shoulder injury suffered at Bath. “It’s always frustrating to miss any sort of rugby, let alone England games,” he says. “But that is part of being a professional sportsman. You are going to miss out on stuff. I feel like I am getting back into it now. Northampton [where Leicester lost a fortnight ago] – I wasn’t feeling great in that game, so I came off quite early because I had flu.”

It is not as if Leicester do not have hooker back up at the moment, though, with Italy’s Leonardo Ghiraldini a more than capable replacement. Indeed there would appear to be little to choose between the pair, resulting in both getting plenty of game time. “There is a little bit of a rotation policy to keep everyone fresh,” says Youngs, who starts on Sunday. “It’s a long season and I have only just come back from a shoulder injury, so it’s a combination of those things that I think Cockers [Richard Cockerill] is managing really well. I don’t think there is anything to be unhappy about. Leo is a good player and whatever Cockers decides I’m happy with. It’s fair enough.”

So Youngs’ battle at Leicester will put him in good stead to challenge Dylan Hartley and Rob Webber (who he faces on Sunday) in the England squad. “They both played well in the autumn,” says Youngs. “I have got a job on my hands to get back in there. Those two are above me and I have got to get above them.”

Youngs has considerable motivation, however. He was the starting hooker when England were trounced by Wales 30-3 at the Millennium Stadium in 2013. And the first fixture of this year’s Six Nations in Cardiff is looming.

How much is that an incentive to regain his place? “Massively,” replies Youngs. “It is a great stadium, and the thought of what happened last time being on your mind is a big factor in it. Hopefully if you play well in the next month before Stuart [Lancaster] announces his squad for the Six Nations, then you will be involved in some capacity.

“We have learnt a lot from that game. But we have probably got to revisit those points before we play them again – what the atmosphere is going to be like and that sort of stuff – so it is important to have those sorts of things learnt back on the table.”

Much can happen before then, though, and first it is Bath. “They are playing well, they are a confident side,” Youngs says. “It’s going to be a tough game but one we are looking forward to. They are causing a lot of teams a lot of problems, which we have been watching on the video. We are well aware of it. But once you aware of it, you still have to stop it.”

Indeed you do. And Bath’s current chutzpah makes you wonder whether Leicester really can avenge such a hammering, even at home.